Marvin Olasky describes how last night’s presidential election (and many others) began to be lost about 50 years ago. Here’s one strong point:
Twenty years ago, as the advent of talk radio left many conservatives thinking they had a weapon adequate to overcome the influences of liberal newspapers and news magazines. That proved untrue, because those print publications still do the original reporting and storytelling that frames national debates.
That’s what we see in the current reporting on what happened in Benghazi and everything related to Muslims in the news. That’s what we see in the established process for candidate debates (“Mr. Ryan, should women be afraid of your election?”). That’s what we see in the reporting on government spending, budget modifications, fiscal cliff, etc.
I stopped listening to NPR over the summer when they used the news on Pixar’s Brave to deride the idea of princesses and ask a homosexual entertainer, who I think goes by the name Princess, to expand on being a princess means. I turned it on the other day to hear them pass lightly over a colonel’s criticism of the grossly irresponsible handling of our Libyan embassy’s defenses to focus on what he believed was miscommunication from the Marines on the ground.
We live in an infoworld today. Our kings or kingmakers are the information keepers.
I can’t say the mainstream media always shares the priorities of Christ; but please be careful arguing about reports of Muslims in the news. More and more, mainstream Evangelical publications have departed from accurate reporting in order to cultivate fear.
C.f. some excellent reporting by the Evangelical Christ and Pop Culture publication, such as this below:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/christandpopculture/2012/10/citizenship-confusion-anti-muslim-rhetoric-and-christian-political-institutions/
I understand there is fear-mongering on all sides. I was just throwing out one recent example I noticed.
CR, that’s a disturbing article. I have heard a few of the stories mentioned in it, and I know the names of the organizations criticized. I wonder if some of this isn’t a clash of secular and religious worldviews, but I think some of it could be called a warfare mentality, a belief that the devil lies and our opponents, whoever they may be, may be lying or misrepresenting the truth too.
I remember an interview with LTC Dooley, in which he said he had long advocated the idea that modern terrorism is essentially a Islamic idea. The Pentagon wanted nothing to do with it. Looking at the Wired.com expose, Dooley appears to have taught some radical things, but I wonder just how many radical ideas are kicked around in the military in supposedly confidential environments. I disagree with Dooley that Islam is the enemy of the United States, but when terrorists are all professing Muslims and there are Islamist leaders who vocally hate us, the line between the two can be difficult to see, especially for a military man who is trained to break and kill things. I’m not sure where this leaves us.